


Creative Endeavors

by kakotheres



Series: Just Write! Fluff Bingo 2019 [13]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Fluff, Knitting, M/M, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 23:14:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20217880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kakotheres/pseuds/kakotheres
Summary: John's grandmother taught him how to knit when he was young.





	Creative Endeavors

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Just Write! Discord server, Fluff Bingo 2019.  
Prompt: Knitting/Crochet

John’s grandmother was the one who taught him to knit. She was an incredibly strong and forthright person, a matriarch who ruled her family with a benevolent power. She had worked hard to raise her sons to be good men. If she had had any daughters, she would have raised them to be strong women. For the most part, she was a lone woman in a sea of men. Her sons had only produced grandsons with no obvious heir to her immense knowledge of the textile arts.

She was a master at turning simple yarn into beautiful works of art. Most of John’s memories of her involved sitting by her feet, watching as a sweater or blanket took shape under her fast-moving fingers. John loved to sit and watch the magic happen, intrigued by the sureness of her hands and the speed of her needles. The click-clack sound was a constant soundtrack in his early life. At some point, she decided that he needed to learn the skill for himself. It was the perfect activity to occupy the mind and fingers of an incredibly serious and intelligent child like John. John learned how to knit and purl, of the importance of choosing the right size needle for your project. Of how sometimes you had to start over, and that doing so didn’t mean you had failed.

His natural athleticism and hand-eye coordination had served him well, letting him easily pick up the skill. His mind reveled in the consistency of making the same stitches, the over-and-under-and-through motions being repeated over and over and over again. When he got older, he would come to love the view from a Ferris wheel, the skill of a beautifully executed football play, the thrill of traveling at speeds no sane human would ever try. But his first love was in the patterns that the simple combination of needles and yarn could produce. He found that love again later in life at college, in equations and variables and numbers that worked the same way that his mind did.

When John had joined the Air Force, knitting was mostly set aside. His time was filled with maneuvers and comrades and heat and sand and death. His relationships with his family were strained by distance and petty disagreements exacerbated by combat stress and divergent paths. He put his memories of sitting on the floor at his grandmother’s knee, learning how to read a knitting pattern or fix a dropped stitch, in a box in the back of his mind. Some part of him wanted to protect those memories from the chaos and the bloodshed, his despair and loss and anger coloring everything he touched.

It wasn’t until he found himself on Atlantis, surrounded by a team that he loved and a place that sang home through his very blood that it started to feel safe to explore those memories again. Sitting in his room, he could feel the ghost of needles he hadn’t held in ages. He ran his hands over yarns and textiles that were being sold on strange, alien planets and they felt familiar in a way few things ever had. A few times, he thought about asking Teyla if knitting needles were a thing that existed among her people and if maybe she could find him a pair so he could see if his fingers still remembered the patterns. But he was the military commander of Atlantis. And so he didn’t.

But the itch was there.

*****

Rodney stood in front of him, arms crossed over his chest, sketchpad dangling from the tips of his fingers. His mouth was set in a stubborn line, every muscle in his body on the defense. He glared at John, a fierce glint in his eye. Honestly, it was one of John’s favorite expressions on him. John loved Rodney’s temper and fierceness.

“Cool, McKay,” John said with a shrug and a crooked grin. “Glad you’ve found a hobby.” They were standing in a hallway near the north pier. John had caught Rodney coming inside and asked him about what he had been doing out there. Sketching had been his answer.

Rodney furrowed his brow in confusion. “What do you mean by that? Are you making fun of me? I can draw if I want to! Just because I’m a brilliant scientific mind doesn’t mean I can’t have other pursuits.”

John rolled his eyes. “No, McKay. I’m saying I’m glad you’ve picked up something to do in your free time other than harassing the biologists.”

“I do not harass them! I just make sure that they’re making taking proper notes so that we can all publish if and when those parts of their projects can be declassified. Some of them clearly got their PhDs from labs that were very lackadaisical about record-keeping procedures, you know.”

“Uh-huh, exactly, harassing them.”

“Whatever.” Rodney uncrossed his arms, looking at the sketchpad in his hands. “Yes, I decided that I needed to look for a creative outlet. I was talking to Lorne – you now he’s not nearly as stupid as he looks sometimes – and he was talking about how doing art helps him to focus and relax. So, I thought I’d experiment with it. A lot of great minds have explored art over the years. You know, I read an interesting paper once on using spectroscopy to further clarify the idea of complimentary colors…”

John let Rodney ramble for a bit on different ways that art could be used to help further scientific study, enjoying the enthusiasm and excitement that was clear in Rodney’s voice as he warmed to his subject. Eventually, he broke in before Rodney could get started on why he really though Beckett overestimated the hours of sleep that a person needed to be a functioning human being.

“McKay…McKay…RODNEY!” Rodney stopped abruptly, blinking at John. John grinned at him. “I’m with you. Not on the sleep thing – you definitely need to get more of that, but on the art thing.” John shrugged, his gaze drifting to a point somewhere over Rodney’s shoulder. He could almost hear the click-clack of needles and his grandmother’s voice talking about the importance of being careful before being quick, lest you find yourself wasting time fixing mistakes that you made in your haste.

“I’ve certainly found it useful so far. Definitely not a waste of time, and already a lot better at proportions and perspective than I was.” Rodney’s hands fluttered around, sketchbook flapping in the air. “It’s…settling. Helps me get my thoughts in order.” He paused, body posture slumping a bit. “I had been thinking about trying music …maybe touch a piano again…but paper and pencils are easier to get here than a baby grand.” Now he was the one avoiding John’s eyes. It was hard to miss the sadness in his voice. John knew about the piano teacher who had told Rodney that he had technical skill but no artistry. He knew how much it still pained the other man, even though he tried to brush it off.

“I understand, Rodney.” John smiled softly. “I’m glad you’ve found something that works.”

“You do?” Rodney asked, cautious hope in his voice. “Huh, I didn’t actually expect that coming from you. Art doesn’t really seem like something that really goes with combat training and shooting things.” John glared at him, and Rodney backtracked quickly. “Not that, I mean, of course soldiers can be creative and all. Just look at Lorne. He’s really quite talented, you know. I just meant…I don’t know…” He paused, his eyes staring into John’s like he could dissect his very soul where he stood. John shifted uncomfortably. “In all this time I’ve known you, you’ve never talked about it. I didn’t think it was something you’d understand.” There was a clear apology in his voice, curiosity in his eyes. “Somehow, I always seem to be underestimating you.”

There was an awkward silence for a few moments. “I should go,” John said. “I need to eat something before that meeting with Elizabeth.” Rodney shuffled from foot to foot, clearly unsure if John had accepted his apology. John let him stew for a second. “Walk with me?” he finally added with a grin.

Rodney let out a frustrated breath, glaring at John for letting him hang like that. “You’re not as funny as you think you are.” They headed off down the hallway, the silence that settled between them more comfortable than before.

“My grandmother,” John finally said. Rodney waited for him to continue, his gaze soft and gentle. “She’s why I understand. She…she taught me how to knit.” John braced, waiting for Rodney assume he was playing a joke, to not believe him, to scoff that knitting wasn’t really art.

Rodney did none of those things. Instead, he just smiled at John, letting their shoulders brush together. “Tell me about her?”

And so, as they walked, John told Rodney about his grandmother. About her fierceness and her core of steel and her steady hands, creating something out of nothing with a magic that had fascinated his younger self. Rodney listened quietly, letting John reminisce on easier days and the woman who shaped him so much. He was there, a steady presence as John delved into memories and emotions that he had locked away for so long. The hallways around them were quiet and still, the hum of Atlantis soft and encouraging in the back of John’s mind.

A few weeks later, a delivery for McKay comes on the _Daedalus_. It gets unloaded along with several other things for Rodney’s lab, but somehow it makes its way to John’s quarters unopened. In sharpie, ‘For John’ was written in Rodney’s familiar scrawl. John lets his hands run over the box, wondering what on earth could be inside. Though it’s large, it’s light and it doesn’t rattle when he pushes it lightly with the toe of his boot. He opens it carefully, pulling aside the flaps with trepidation. Inside, he finds hundreds of skeins of yarn in a multitude of colors. Tucked to the side are several pairs of knitting needles in various sizes. He picks one up, his hands wrapping around it in a way that is both intimately familiar and indescribably foreign.

A warm smile spreads across his face, and he feels Atlantis’s warmth in response to his joy.

*****

John’s first completed project is a scarf made from warm, bulky grey yarn. The pattern is based on converting a sentence in binary code to a pattern of knits and purls. He had to redo hundreds of stitches, his hands fumbling after so much time has passed. In the end, his patience and care are worth it. The rows are even and neat, the scarf warm and soft to the touch. He runs his hands over the stitches that spell out ‘I love you.’

He gives it to Rodney, who can be seen wearing it in the chill air-conditioning of the labs. He wraps it tightly around his throat, the ends tucked into his jacket as he sits capturing the view of the ocean from one of Atlantis’s piers onto paper. His hands often come up to gently run his fingers across the soft yarn as he adds reds and orange to the vision of the setting sun. Whenever John sees him wearing it, warmth spreads through his chest. He loves to feel the contrast of the knit and purl stitches as he runs his hands across the back of Rodney’s neck.

(The second scarf is ridiculously long and spells out ‘smartest man in the universe’. He gives it to Zelenka, who makes sure to wear it around Rodney all the time. It eventually meets its demise in mysterious circumstances. Rodney denies all knowledge of the event, but everyone knows he doctored the security footage. John thinks it’s cute and makes sure to make Zelenka a new scarf that doesn’t have any hidden messages, and that one doesn’t meet with any deadly accidents.)

**Author's Note:**

> Binary to Knitting Pattern Converter: http://www.lochan.org/keith/knitting/asciiknitting.html


End file.
